The failed prison policy that is destroying American schools

The collapse of quality in American public education is no secret, and the causes are legion. Every year our public schools graduate students who can barely read or write and have no hope of finding any nation other than the United States on a map. Some of the factors involved in this degradation are beyond the control of the school system, but many are the result of deliberate policy choices implemented by administrators.

Due to a flurry of reporting and an overwhelming volume of video evidence, parents are increasingly aware of the nefarious racial and gender ideology now being taught in classrooms. But most parents are not aware that woke ideology has deeply impacted the discipline structure in public schools as well. A failed prison policy known as Restorative Justice has now become the standard discipline model in many American schools, even in deeply conservative states, and students are paying the price.

Restorative Justice began as a movement in the 1970s to offer a therapeutic alternative to incarceration. There is plenty of academic jargon layered on top of the process, but the theory was that by making criminals face their victims and talk through the impact of their actions, rehabilitation could be achieved with a reduction in, or complete abolition of, jail time. It does not take a rocket scientist to see the problem here: This means placing victims in contact with their abusers and subjecting them to additional trauma for the benefit of the criminal. The motivation for bureaucrats was never really reconciliation for the victims, but instead an overall reduction in incarceration.

The left was just as interested in releasing unrepentant criminals onto the streets in the 1970s as it is today, and Restorative Justice provided the opportunity for bureaucrats to reduce metrics like incarceration time and duration of prison sentences. The literature in favor of Restorative Justice also advertises its “human rights analysis that emphasizes the factors of race and class in the over-incarceration of people.” The approach is regularly presented as a way to reduce the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans. Restorative Justice was designed from the ground up to create a woke criminal justice system by actively reducing the punishment of criminals in the hopes of driving down incarceration metrics for favored minorities.

This system was unpopular with both victims and the wider public, but the movement was not defeated. Restorative Justice is still practiced in several states today with varying levels of victim participation. The process has also been translated into a system used primarily for conflict resolution inside the prison system itself. Inmates who have wronged each other talk through their disagreements, confronting one another in a therapeutic environment in lieu of traditional corrective punishment. It is this incarnation of Restorative Justice that has been brought into the public education system. As insane as it might seem, the government treats schools as prisons for children and applies the same model of conflict resolution in both institutions.

School administrators, like almost every bureaucratic manager in the modern world, are driven by metrics. The funding for schools and the bonuses awarded to their administrators are based on test scores, graduation rates, and number of disciplinary actions. Suspensions are bad for metrics, not only because they drive up the number of disciplinary actions, but because students of color tend to accrue them in disproportionate numbers.

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